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Timea Jurj, the woman from Satu Mare which according to British publication The Sun was allegedly using her children to assemble the toys used in Kinder chocolate eggs, claims that everything was a set up and that she was promised her husband would get a job in Great Britain.
"I didn't fully understand what they told me in English. He said it would all be fine. They said that they wanted to promote the eggs. I have two children that go to school, or to kindergarten, respectively, they definitely don't work for 13 hours and he even involved my niece in this. He told her «Come on, take a picture». She looked at him and she didn't understand what he was telling her, as he was speaking English", Timea Jurj told Digi 24 yesterday.
When asked whether the report published by British daily The Sun was a set up, the woman from Satu Mare confirmed that it was, and said that the journalists had promised her husband a job in Great Britain: "They offered to help my husband go to England and work there. Nothing more".
The General Department of Social Aid and Child Protection (DGASPC) of Satu Mare and the Territorial Labor Inspectorate have launched investigations on the family accused of using her children to work on assembling toys used in Kinder chocolate eggs and of the two companies that were paying the parents, following the story published by British daily The Sun.
The head of the DGASPC Satu Mare, Mariana Dragoş, said that the institution referred the matter to itself, following the article published by The Sun, in order to check whether the facts that were presented were real, whether those children had been subjected to various forms of abuse and whether their rights to a good life and education have been threatened.
Mariana Dragoş said that only after the investigation is complete will it be possible to establish whether this is a case of parents exploiting their children through forced labor, and stated that the probe would involve other institutions, specifically the local authorities, the police, the Territorial Labor Inspectorate.
The head of the DGASPC Satu Mare stated that if parents, who are responsible for the raising and caring for their children have physically or emotionally abused them, the appropriate measures will be taken, in order to serve the interest of the children, which takes precedence over anything else.
Mariana Dragoş said during the investigation that they will talk to the parents in order to reach a conclusion and to draw up a report which will establish whether this situation meets the description of abuse and forced labor, report which may be ready within a week.
The Territorial Labor Inspectorate (ITM) of Satu Mare has begun audits at Romexera and Prolegic, companies which The Sun mentioned in their story.
Ioan Flore, of the Satu Mare Territorial Labor Inspectorate, said that two audit teams have visited the two companies, and the probes are ongoing.
He said that the ITM audited the two companies in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and that they did not have any work-at-home employees nor were any cases of child labor uncovered.
Ioan Flore said that the information presented in the article published by "The Sun" claims that the parents were supposedly employees of the two companies, but the audits revealed that their names did not appear in the employee records. As a result, until the audits are completed, the veracity and the authenticity of the information presented in that article would be treated with reserve.
He stated that if the information in the story published by "The Sun" was accurate, the two companies are liable to be fined if they did not have work-from-home contracts concluded with the people that the article reported on. The criminal prosecutors are also going to be notified if the allegations of child exploitation are confirmed.
"The Sun" reporters claimed that poor families in Romania work for about 13 hours a day in their own homes to assemble the small plastic toys found inside the Kinder chocolate eggs. Also, Romanian children aged only 6 participate in that exhausting labor in exchange for a payment of just 22 pence per hour. Quoting the parent of one of the children involved in the assembling of those toys, the newspaper wrote that was "slave labor".
For each thousand eggs assembled, a family gets approximately 20 RON, the equivalent of just 3.77 GBP, wrote The Sun, which reported that the products are then shipped to the Ferrero factory of Carei. The intermediaries sell the assembled eggs for 80 pence apiece.
"If the Ferrero executives knew what was happening in Romania, they'd probably have a heart attack. The company isn't getting what it paid for, and the intermediaries are making a fortune off the work of people that are treated like slaves", an anonymous source from within Ferrero said, quoted by the Sun.
The Jurj family was involved in the process, the British magazine further writes. Timea (30 years old) together with her husband Christian (41), as well as their children Patrick (11) and Hannah (6) worked on assembling the toys, The Sun journalists wrote.
"This is slave labor, but what else could we do, we have no opportunities. When you see the way we live here you have to understand why our dream is to go to Great Britain", Christian Jurj told The Sun.
Apparently the family would get the eggs and the plastic toys from a company called Prolegic, which is a subcontractor to Romexa SA, according to information posted by the British newspaper.
According to "The Sun", quoted by News.ro, the representatives of Romexa SA said that they had no idea that the subcontracting party was sending the eggs to be assembled by poor families.
The Sun in 2013: "Gypsies from Romania and Bulgaria getting ready for a massive invasion of Great Britain"
In 2013, The Sun wrote that gypsies from Romania and Bulgaria were planning a massive invasion of Britain once the labor market restrictions would be removed in 2014. At the time, The Sun described, in a report, the squalid living conditions of the nomadic families that dwell near the garbage dump of Cluj.
"Nomads in Romania and Bulgaria intend to travel en masse to Great Britain as soon as the restrictions are lifted. About 1 million gypsies have already settled in camps in Western Europe, including Great Britain and Ireland. But even more of them will invade us in January 2014, when the borders open", The Sun wrote.
"The Sun" reporters traveled to Cluj to get in direct contact with the gypsies "isolated by the authorities because they are considered thieves and beggars".
Sky News has presented Romania as the hub for heavy weapons trafficking, report which was proven to be a lie
This year, British TV network Sky News was suggesting in a report which later proved to have been staged, that Romania was a hub for weapons trafficking.
Sky News broadcasted a report made by Stuart Ramsay concerning Romanian arms traffickers. The report presented a recording of the journalist meeting with two alleged weapons traffickers, who were presenting him several types of firearms which the reporter claimed were military grade weapons.
The Romanian government has disputed the veracity of the documentary, announcing that there would be some investigations in the case. The head of the DIICOT, Daniel Horodniceanu, has stated that an attempt at discrediting the country was not out of the question, because based on what he had seen, as a non-expert, he could tell that those weapons were hunting weapons, rather than military, and traffickers allowing themselves to be filmed was hard to believe.
The Romanian police wrote that the weapons presented in the video were hunting weapons and their ownership was legal in Romania for hunters, collectors as well as rangers. The Romanian embassy in Great Britain said, in response to an enquiry by News.ro, that it had received the information sent by the Romanian Police about the fact that the weapons shown in the Sky News story were actually hunting weapons rather than military ones, and had sent it to the British news station as a right of reply, as well as to the British Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The Romanian Embassy has also notified the UK communications regulator, OFCOM, concerning the content of the story. "In the letters sent to the entities in question, the embassy has mentioned the inaccuracy, incompleteness and misleading nature of the story, which did not support the conclusions of the journalistic investigation in question, and which creates a negative perception of Romania among the British public", the Romanian embassy in London said.
It would appear that the British journalists paid "hunters" into playing the roles of traffickers and fed them lines which the "actors" would sometimes forget, which meant that multiple takes were needed. The Romanians were paid a total of 2000 Euros, and they were misled by the British reporters that they were actually filming for a documentary, according to the findings of the DIICOT prosecutors.
Stuart Ramsay, the author of the story broadcasted by Sky News on Romanian weapons traffickers posted on Twitter a message in which he stood by his story, which the Bucharest authorities claimed was a set up.
The alleged weapons traffickers have been identified by the DIICOT prosecutors. According to sources from within the Police, the British journalists instructed the three Romanians what to wear and what to answer when they were asked questions about "the weapons trafficking in Romania". The investigators have found all the weapons which the Sky News journalists filmed for their story, and they were actually hunting weapons. The prosecutors have information that the British journalists knew everything was a set up and they paid the Romanians to allow themselves to be filmed. Prosecutors brought charges of aggravated contraband and violation of weapons ownership regulations in that case.
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